No ‘Haven’ from bad acting

This year’s Nicholas Sparks’ movie, Lasse Hallstrom’s “Safe Haven” arrives in time for Valentine’s Day, and if your boyfriend lets you talk him into seeing this, he’s a keeper, ladies.­

The film is one of the dopiest Sparks-based entries in a list featuring such titles as “The Notebook,” “Message in a Bottle,” “A Walk to Remember,” “Nights in Rodanthe” and “Dear John.”

This latest effort boasts Julianne Hough (“Footloose,” “Rock of Ages”) as the female lead, along with Josh Duhamel of “Transformers” fame. Hough and Duhamel do not have the chops or the chemistry to make this float. That and a groan-inducing whopper-of-a-twist-ending make “Safe Haven” a genuine bummer.

Hough, a pleasant screen presence whose acting ability is minimal at this point, is Katie, a young woman we see as a brunette in jagged opening scenes involving a knife, blood and noir-ish evil doings. Her hair cropped and bleached, Katie flees from a disheveled Detective Tierney (Aussie David Lyons), who is supposed to be a member of the “Boston PD” and whose office resembles a cheap TV set. Katie wends her way to Sparks-land, a small coastal­ town in the sun- and family-values-drenched South. Somehow managing to find a job as a waitress and renting a picturesque house in the woods (a “fixer-upper,” we’re assured), Katie hopes to remain anonymous and alone.

But she meets two new friends: Jo (Cobie Smulders), a mysterious dark-haired beauty who is also hiding out from some personal troubles, and supposedly nerdy store-owner Alex (Duhamel), a widower with two extremely cute kids — precocious preschooler Lexie (scene-stealing moppet Mimi Kirkland, who acts rings around Hough) and brooding and accident-prone preteen Josh (Noah Lomax).

Small touches such as having Katie and Alex both put their feet through Katie’s floor are dim efforts at comedy. We learn that Alex’s beloved wife died some time back of cancer and that she left letters for her son and daughter to read when they get older. Duhamel’s Alex persists in looking dopey and goofy especially when Katie is around. They go canoeing, then canoodling and become an item.

How long do you think it will take for the increasingly unhinged Tierney to find Katie? Too long, I assure you. “Life is full of second chances,” Jo assures Katie. Bah, humbug.